Well guys, Destiny’s loot cave is patched. By now it’s basically old hat. Fortunately, there will always be more loot caves. And while there have been many discussions about why people use the loot cave and the potential pitfalls of exploiting Destiny’s loot system in this manner, let’s take a moment to analyze exactly what led to the almost necessity of the loot cave and similar exploits, what can be done to fix the system, and why Bungie decided to close the cave before fixing the loot system.

I love trying to prove points in simple, hypothetical thought exercises. Let’s say that you’re playing Skyrim. You’re running through a cave and you come across two passageways. You know that the passage on the left takes you to a dead end with a mudcrab in it. If you kill the mudcrab, there’s a 10% chance that he will drop a massive sword that deals 1000 damage per hit. In the right tunnel there’s a dragon that, likewise, has a 10% chance that he will drop the same exact sword. Now I’m not sure about you, but I tend to boil this problem down into three simple questions:

1. Which will lead to a greater reward?2. Which will take me less time to do?3. Which will be less frustrating?

In this particular scenario, both lead to exactly the same reward, so that issue is out. I know that I can kill a mudcrab in a single hit with pretty much any weapon, and I know that the only frustrating thing about killing a mudcrab is trying to kill the thing before he scoots away behind a rock or into the water. So the obvious choice is to kill the mudcrab. Even if killing the dragon would be more stimulating, I can kill the mudcrab much more quickly than I can kill the dragon.

Now, let’s say that the mudcrab spawns once every few seconds forever. I want that sword, so I know that if I kill that mudcrab 10 times, theoretically, I have a 100% chance of getting that sword. I know statistically this is incorrect, but running the test to infinity gives me a 1 in 10 chance, so every 10 times I run the scenario I will eventually average out to 1 drop. I took statistics. Relax.

This is the exact scenario that Destiny’s loot system has found itself in. Bungie violated one of the most basic rules of creating an RPG. I just started getting back into modding Skyrim, and if you’ve ever taken a look under that game’s hood you’ll see they have a ridiculously complex leveling system. Almost everything can be levelled according to the player’s experience level. Enemies, items, rewards, weapons, armors, potions, can all be increased in value based on what level the player is playing at. This also includes the loot drop. If a level 1 player kills a common bandit, he’ll get some extremely cheap items. If a level 100 player kills a common bandit, he’ll get significantly better items than the level 1 player, but they’re just about equally as cheap to his current build.

That same system calculates item drops based on the difficulty of the enemy. The mudcrab’s loot should not be the same as the largest, most powerful dragon in the game. Otherwise, why fight the dragon? I’ll just go farm mudcrabs for a few days and come out with the best loot in the game.

I have beaten Destiny. I am level 23, extremely close to getting level 24. I have beaten every story mission in the game at least once. I have beaten every strike mission in the game at least once. I have played a decent number of crucible matches. I have participated in weekly strikes and weekly heroic missions. But until last night when I completed the Queen’s special bounty missions I did not receive a single legendary engram. Forget legendary items, I haven’t received a single legendary engram drop.

This is a serious problem. The enemies in the strike missions, on the higher difficulty levels, and especially the enemies on Mars are significantly more difficult than the enemies on Earth, yet the odds of getting any engram are exactly the same.

Compare this to every other major dungeon crawling RPG. Despite the many hundreds of hours I have sunk into series like Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Fallout, etc. I have yet to encounter a game that completely disregards the basic structure of leveled item drops until Destiny.

Destiny’s loot system is designed to reward farming. Every mission is of equal value. It doesn’t matter if players are going back and doing the first missions on Earth or the last missions on Mars, everything is equal. On paper, this is a perfect system. If the hardest missions on Mars gave the best loot, people would only ever do the hardest missions on Mars. People want the greatest reward for their effort, and Destiny is designed to make sure that people get the equal reward no matter what they’re doing.

But there’s a fatal flaw in the system. Once you reach level 26 and above, you have access to these crazy high-level “raid” missions. It’s the ultimate goal for every player, to be good enough to beat the hardest missions in the game. How do you get there? By getting the best armor in the game. How do you get the best armor in the game?

Well, you could do it by buying the armor in the specialty shops. You can grind your way to this by playing in the crucible or completing vanguard missions. Crucible matches take time but you can eventually get there. Vanguard missions are exactly the same as normal missions, but with certain difficulty levels. Or you can complete bounties that basically reward you for doing what you already do, just with a slight twist.

But those take time, lots of time. Instead, there’s the loot cave. The loot cave rewarded players with engram drops much more quickly than normal gameplay, which gave a lot more money, parts, weapons, and armor than normal gameplay. It was extremely easy and the reward was quick and obvious.

But having farmed in the loot cave for hours I can tell you that it’s a fallacy. The idea that the cave gives you great rewards quickly is fake. Despite hours of farming I only ended up with a few blue engrams and a ton of green items and engrams. Those players that have received one or two legendaries after hours of farming can tell you that the odds of getting a legendary item from those engrams was slim. Even after the patch that forces purple engrams to give purple items, there’s still a significant chance that the legendary item you get isn’t going to be for your class, or is going to be worse than the legendary items you already may own.

The fallacy is exactly the same kind of flawed logic that draws people into gambling for money. There is a huge difference between playing a Vegas game for fun and playing it for profit. You can earn significantly more money working eight hours at a minimum wage job than you can playing any game in Vegas, but the lure of the card tables is the potential for huge profits with relatively zero work. Despite the fact that thousands of people have walked away from Vegas completely broke, players still head to casinos day in and day out to try and hit it big. The loot cave works on the exact same principles.

Bungie needed to patch out the loot cave. Mining the loot cave isn’t fun, it’s an extremely boring experience, and the actual rewards, not the potential rewards, don’t line up with the effort. But the idea is that the loot cave provided the best rewards for the effort. Once players realized that the rewards weren’t there, the loot cave miners would have started leaving in droves, giving up on the idea of obtaining better armor and weapons. Bungie didn’t have to worry about players getting amazing armor too quickly because of the cave, but they did have to worry about players getting bored while trying to obtain that armor.

Unfortunately, patching out the loot cave is only putting a bandaid on a significantly larger wound. Bungie’s loot system is fatally flawed. Destiny doesn’t currently have enough substance to keep players interested once they finish the ultimate raids. The cooperative gameplay helps with the replayability, but the grind for loot is too difficult. This is arguably better than the grind for loot being too easy, since it does increase the amount of playtime required to hit the maximum levels, but in the end it feels exploitative. I don’t believe this is the kind of thing that can be fixed quickly and easily. Destiny’s entire loot system, from the huge gaps in the quality of items in the shops at the Tower to the number of item drops at the end of missions and crucible matches, is designed to only reward players who play for significant amounts of time. That was a purposeful design decision, not some unfortunate accident.

This kind of decision isn’t unsual, developers are forced to make similar decisions all the time. Sometimes they turn out well, other times they turn out poorly. Destiny’s ultimate problem isn’t really the loot drops. It sucks that players can’t get those cool, unique armors and weapons without a mind-numbing amount of work. But the problem is that players are running out of content way too quickly. There simply isn’t enough replayability to keep gamers interested in the months to come. Destiny will release new content, but it’s tough to justify the purchase of a season pass when I’m feeling a little bit cheated in the content available in the base game.

The developers were right to patch the loot cave, but just like the “wizard came from the moon” line, it’s just a small fix to a few much larger issues. If you like Destiny, by all means keep playing it. But hopefully you won’t fault me for being a bit disappointed in the execution of the ideas.